How to disable Ctrl+C at Windows startup

The problem: Windows lets anyone press the Ctrl+C keys during its initial booting phase and stop the booting. If the user is knowledgeable enough about the MSDOS mode, s/he can then examine the contents of all your drives and folders, etc. To prevent this from happening, you can reconfigure your computer to disable the Ctrl+C keys in the MSDOS mode.

The following method may be used to fix this problem:

First, make a backup copy of the C:\CONFIG.SYS file (just in case something goes wrong) by copying this file onto your emergency startup disk. Also, make sure that you can actually use the startup disk to boot your computer into the MSDOS mode.

Open C:\CONFIG.SYS with Notepad and add the following line at the very beginning of the file:

BREAK=OFF

Now save the file and reboot the computer.

For more information about the CONFIG.SYS file and its contents, please refer to the file Config.txt, installed by Windows in your C:\Windows folder.

Note: Note that this setting also disables Ctrl+C for all programs running in the MSDOS mode.